Ask HN: Why Can't Phone Carriers Stop Spam Calls?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17257528

by cascom • 8 years ago

3 9 8 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

cascom• 8 years ago

I guess I'm just curious how and where spam callers enter the telco system, and why they are so difficult to stop...

icedchai• 8 years ago

Have you heard of VOIP? Anyone, literally anyone, can sign up for a VOIP phone number from anywhere in the world. They might get "stopped" after a few hundred complaints, but that isn't much of an impediment...

Rjevski• 8 years ago

The PSTN is like a worldwide message queue with no authentication what so ever. Anyone can enter from anywhere in the world and spoof any number they want, even those that can’t potentially exist.

lonewolf22• 8 years ago

Some of the time it's not spam, and they just can't afford denial of service.

BjoernKW2• 8 years ago

They can but they won’t because it’s a revenue stream for them just as mail spam is a major revenue stream for postal services.

I’m at a loss why regulators don’t do anything about this (well, other than downright corruption, that is ...).

tusharc• 8 years ago

How is phone call spam a revenue stream for carriers? Most plans these days are unlimited calling. Under that assumption, spam calls are cost and bad customer experience.

BjoernKW2• 8 years ago

Reserving a certain amount of phone numbers costs money as well as do phone plans for businesses. Those spammers typically don't have just one phone number but plenty of them.

They probably also don't have your usual private phone plan with unlimited calling but some sort of high volume call centre plan.

Broken_Hippo• 8 years ago

Sure, personal plans have unlimited calling. But a call center? That's multiple phone lines at business rates, and often an internal phone system as well. These are likely special, more expensive lines since they aren't receiving outside calls. I'm going to guess there are international agreements that allow for some of the cost of international connection to be paid by the caller as well (yet another way to make money: International calls).

On the other end, if they were to try to stop spam calls, it would cost money. You'd have to have a way to find out if a caller has legitimate business or not: A collection agency might be marked as spam quite a bit, yet shutting them down would likely mean a lawsuit. Sales calls seem to fall into a weird grey area. There would need to be a system for consumers to report spam calls. These all cost money to build and maintain.

Not to mention enforcement, which would be especially tricky given international calls and the bit about legitimate businesses being marked as spam.

gormz• 8 years ago

Just write me a quick script to find all spam callers, we'll cancel their numbers even though we make money off them. Ohh, and you can't mess up at all. If we cancel someone's number that isn't a spam caller their going to be pissed. Ohh, and also these spam callers can change their number 100 times a minute because of voip. good luck!

Ask HN: Why Can't Phone Carriers Stop Spam Calls?

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